This post goes over a cheap Buffer alternative for scheduling repeating posts.

Buffer has long been one of the easiest ways to schedule and spread out your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Google Plus.

However, Buffer lacks some core features like repeating posts, and gets pretty expensive ($99 per month) as soon as you go over 100 scheduled posts, or need more than 1 team member connected to the same account.

If you are looking for a more affordable way to manage your social media accounts, OneUp is a cheap buffer alternative.. We’ll take a look at the similarities and differences between OneUp and Buffer:

Repeating posts

OneUp — With OneUp, you can easily schedule social media posts to repeat for a specific number of times, at set intervals. More engagement, more traffic, more business.

For example, if I want to share my latest blog post once a month for the next 4 months, I can do that in about 10 seconds.

Buffer — While it is a great tool for spreading out your posts, Buffer does NOT allow you to repeat your social media posts. For example, if you wanted to repeat the same Facebook post every month, you would have to manually re-queue it every 30 days.

Social Networks

OneUp — Works with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google My Business on all tiers. For Instagram posts, OneUp has direct scheduling, so no push notification is necessary.

Buffer — Works with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google Plus. However, Pinterest is only included in the $15/month and higher tiers. For Instagram posts, Buffer allows you to schedule a post, but will send you a push notification at that scheduled time to post it manually.

Price

OneUp — $3 per month for up to 10 social media profiles and 200 scheduled posts, making it a cheap buffer alternative for scheduling repeating posts.

Buffer — Paid tier starts at $15 per month for 8 accounts. Buffer does provide a free tier, but it does not include Pinterest, and limits scheduling to only 10 posts in your queue at a time. This might be a good fit for someone who seldom uses social media. However, only being able to schedule 10 posts in advance defeats the purpose of scheduling for people who are a little more serious.

Scheduling content

OneUp — If you want a simple way to schedule social media posts, OneUp is for you. You can select the how many times you would like your posts to repeat, and at what intervals, all with just a couple clicks. Of course, you can always schedule something to post only once.

Buffer — Buffer makes it very easy to spread out your content. However, they don’t allow for posts to be automatically recycled.

Categories

OneUp — Allows you to create and schedule posts by categories. This allows you to filter posts by different styles or accounts.

Buffer — Does not allow you to create categories.

Drag-and-drop content calendar

OneUp — Allows you to see all your posts, filter by category, edit, and drag-and-drop via the calendar view.

Buffer — Does not have a drag-and-drop calendar.

Summary

For those who never post repeating content, Buffer might be the right tool for you. They offer a useful product and a simple interface for spacing out social media posts.

For smaller businesses, podcasters, bloggers, YouTubers, and social media marketers, OneUp is a cheap Buffer alternative for scheduling repeating posts, and provides an affordable solution for scheduling and automatically repeating your posts at set intervals.

For anyone that wants to schedule pieces of repeated content to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, Meet Edgar is a great solution. Additionally, the ability to automatically recycle your evergreen content makes Meet Edgar ever more appealing.

However, with a price tag of $49 per month, Meet Edgar is not a realistic solution for most small business owners, bloggers, podcasters, or YouTubers.

So what options are there for those that would like to add content, create a posting schedule for specific times and dates, import RSS feeds, and schedule evergreen posts to be shared multiple times — all at an affordable price?

OneUp is a cheap alternative to Meet Edgar that works with the following social media platforms: Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn profiles, LinkedIn Pages, Pinterest, and Google My Business. Similar to Meet Edgar, OneUp helps you get more social media traffic by automatically recycling your evergreen blogs, videos, or podcasts.

Let’s take a look at Meet Edgar vs. OneUp:

Price

Meet Edgar provides only one pricing tier: $49/month. This price works if you bring in a ton of revenue, but that is not the case for most businesses. If you are like most people, $49 per month is a steep price to pay.

OneUp starts at $9/month, making it a cheap alternative to Meet Edgar, and a realistic solution for anyone that is managing multiple social media pages.

Social Networks

Meet Edgar — Works only with Facebook, LinkedInandTwitter, and it does not let you reshare content on Twitter.

Meet Edgar does not work with Pinterest or Google My Business. In addition, Meet Edgar does not allow you to automatically reshare your evergreen content on Twitter. This is Meet Edgar’s core feature, yet you can only reshare your posts on two social networks: Facebook and LinkedIn.

OneUp allows you to schedule both one-time and evergreen posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google My Business, making it a more robust alternative to Meet Edgar.

Scheduling content

OneUp — If you want a simple way to schedule social media posts, OneUp is for you. You can select how many times you would like your evergreen posts to be recycled, and at what intervals, all with just a couple clicks.

For example, if you want to share your latest blog post once every 3 months and 5 times total, you can do that in about 10 seconds.

Meet Edgar — Like OneUp, Meet Edgar allows you to recycle your evergreen content, but it requires that you upload posts to a queue. The more content you add to your queue, the less frequently your posts will resurface. Depending on what you’re looking for, Meet Edgar could be a great solution.

However, many people just want their evergreen posts to be recycled at a set interval, like “once a month for the next 3 months”, without having to do the mental calendar math:

If I have 56 posts in my queue and I add my blog post, how often will it be republished if I am sharing 3 posts a day, but adding 2–5 more each week?

Content Calendar

OneUp — With OneUp, you can view your individual posts, sort by social account or category, drag and drop posts to change the date, or click on the post to edit the content and time.

GIFs

OneUp — Allows you to schedule GIFs on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+.

Meet Edgar — Only allows you to post GIFs to Twitter.

Free trial

OneUp — Offers a free trial, no credit card necessary.

Meet Edgar — Requires a credit card for their free trial.

Nobody likes when they have to give their credit card information just to try something out. If a customer is getting value after a free trial, ONLY THEN should they be asked for payment information.

Meet Edgar requires a credit card just to test it out. If you forget to cancel in time, there goes $49.

OneUp offers a free trial (without a credit card) so you can see if it’s a good fit with your social media accounts.

Summary

For businesses with a higher budget, managing between 20–25 social media accounts, MeetEdgar might be the right social media management tool. They offer a useful product and great customer support for larger businesses that want to recycle their evergreen content.

For small business owners, podcasters, bloggers, YouTubers, and social media marketers that need a cheaper alternative to Meet Edgar, OneUp provides an affordable solution for scheduling and automatically resharing your evergreen content — as well as world class customer support. OneUp works with Facebook pages and groups, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn Profiles, LinkedIn Pages, Pinterest, and Google My Business.

For anyone who manages more than one Instagram account, you know the struggle of constantly switching back and forth between accounts.

However, it becomes even more of a headache once you hit 5 Instagram accounts, because that is the limit for how many you can manage on a mobile device. Some people buy multiple phones just so they can manage more than 5 Instagram accounts.

That is crazy.

If you need an easy way to schedule and post photos to more than 5 Instagram accounts from a computer instead of managing it all from your smartphone, check out OneUp.

OneUp allows you to easily post to multiple Instagram accounts at the same time, and to schedule out posts weeks and months into the future. You can add hashtags and @tag other users in the description, and you can even schedule Instagram Stories with OneUp.

OneUp schedules the post, then directly publishes to Instagram, so there is no push notification needed.

Starting at less than $10/month, OneUp is an affordable and convenient way to manage multiple Instagram accounts. OneUp also supports Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google My Business.

This post walks through what Google My Business is, the benefits of using it, how to post, and some of the other features. If you are already familiar with Google My Business, jump down to the How to schedule Google My Business posts section.

One of the newest ways to market your business is through Google My Business, sometimes referred to as GMB.

Google My Business allows you to stand out in Google search results by sharing photos, announcing sales or specials, posting what’s new, managing reviews, and keeping your contact information and open hours current.

You have probably seen Google My Business results in your Google searches, even though you may not have realized it.

Example of what GMB results look like on mobile

Should I be using Google My Business?

In short, yes. Google My Business is a free way to stand out in Google search results.

Because Google My Business is relatively new, most businesses are still not using it yet. For those who start using GMB early, you can get a huge leg up on your competition.

You are most likely already posting on social media, right?

Well unless you are paying to boost your posts, your audience will probably be limited to only people who already follow you.

However, with Google My Business, your posts have the opportunity to reach people outside of your existing audience.

Don’t take my word for it though. Here is what people have to say about Google My Business on Reddit:

I decided to go a step further and personally ask if people saw tangible results from posting on Google My Business:

Does posting on Google My Business impact my search rankings?

In addition to helping with Google search rankings, updating your Google My Business listing can lead to people choosing you over a competitor.

Let’s take a look at a hypothetical example:

Suppose you own a restaurant. It’s Monday and the weather is bad, so you know business is going to be slow this evening. You decide to run an extended happy hour deal from 4pm until close. You announce the deal on your Facebook and Instagram pages. Now you wait for all the customers to flock over. Right?

But what if someone who doesn’t follow you on social media is Googling a few different restaurants, trying to figure out where to eat tonight?

When they Google your restaurant name, they have no idea about your special happy hour deal. They end up eating and drinking at another restaurant 😢

That would be bad… but good thing you actually posted the extended happy hour deal on Google My Business as well. Those people end of seeing the deal when they Google your business’s name, and end up choosing your restaurant because of it 😀

How to post on Google My Business

So we’ve established that posting on Google My Business is important. Now let’s look at how to post on Google My Business.

Verify your business — Google will send you a physical postcard with a unique verification number to ensure that your address is legitimate.

Post

When creating a new post, you will have 4 different posting options:

What’s new posts: Posts that provide general information about your business. You can include a photo/video, link, Call-to-Action (CTA) button, and other information. For example, a restaurant could make a post to promote a new menu item.

Event posts: Posts that promote an event your business is involved with or supports. Event posts require a title, start/end dates and time, and may include a photo/video, CTA button, and other information. For example, a bookstore may advertise a local author’s book signing or a book club meeting.

Offer posts: Posts that provide promotional sales or offers from your business. Offer posts require a title and start/end dates and times. A “View offer” CTA button is automatically added to the post. You can also include a photo/video, coupon code, link, and terms and conditions with the post. For example, a pizza parlor may advertise a 20% off large pizzas for a week.

Product posts: Posts that emphasize a specific product your business sells. Product posts require a title and photo or video. You can also include a CTA button and other information. For example, an electronics store may promote a new phone for sale.

You can also add a button to your post if you wish, which you can link to whatever you’d like.

5 keys to writing a post

Choose a suitable post type: Is your post about an event? An offer or time-sensitive deal? Do you have news to share? Consider what you want your post to do — whether to encourage customers to visit your store, sell something, or announce a new feature.

Photos: Take a high-resolution photo reinforcing your message so your post stands out. Photos should be simple, direct, in-focus and well-lit, with bright, vibrant colors. Photos should have a minimum resolution of 400px wide by 300px tall, in JPG or PNG format.

Title (if your post is an event): Describe your event in 4–5 words. You have up to 58 characters for your title.

More details: Be clear about your offer/event. You have up to 1,500 characters for the description of your post, but the ideal length is between 150–300 characters.

Call to action: Include instructions such as “Buy,” “Book online,” “Learn more,” “Call,” or “Visit.”

Writing a Google Post: Do’s and Don’ts

What to do

Be precise: What are the 3 things your customer needs to know? What do you want them to remember, for how much, and when?“Happy Hour! Half-price milkshakes from 5–6 PM every Friday.”

Be personal: Show what your business values:“We love families at Mike’s and to show our appreciation, kids eat free this weekend!”

Tell your customers what they can do. Are you selling a product? Tell them how they can buy.“Tickets range from $60-$160, and are available for purchase at the front desk starting at 12 PM EST today.”

This post will show 4 different ways to schedule Google My Business posts.

Are you using Google My Business?

For those unfamiliar, Google My Business (not to be confused with Google+) is a free platform that Google created to help businesses manage the search results that show when someone searches your business name. This is where businesses manage the contact information, open hours, reviews, and pictures that show in Google search results.

Recently, Google added the ability for business owners to post updates to their Google My Business listing and to schedule Google My Business posts, allowing you to share photos, announce sales or specials, showcase new products, and list upcoming events.

These Google My Business posts show up when someone searches your business’s name on Google, giving you an easy way of occupying more real estate in the search results, and drawing more attention and traffic.

History of Google My Business

Launched in June 2014, the focus of Google My Business was to allow an easy way for local businesses as well as national brands to be found on Google. It was a huge change from the sponsored listings and directory listings of the past on Google. Google My Business allowed business owners to get the visibility they needed on Google, in a way that was simple to manage.

Google My Business now allows entrepreneurs to manage their business’s name, address, phone number, website, reviews, pictures, service areas, opening date, instant messaging, and even let customers use the AI-powered Google Assistant to book with you.

Eligibility

Listings on Google My Business can only be created for businesses that either have a physical location that customers can visit, or that travel to visit customers where they are. Brands, organizations, artists, and other online-only businesses aren’t eligible for Google My Business listings.

Why Google My Business is important

According to this study by Moz and this study by Search Engine Journal, signals from Google My Business play a substantial role in local SEO.

Despite this, many local businesses have yet to claim their free Google My Business listing, giving those that do a chance to stand out from the crowd.

Getting started

Then, you will have to verify your account by submitting a code that is mailed to your business address via physical postcard. This step is necessary to unlock all Google My Business features.

After your company information is added, you will be able to access your account to start personalizing your listing.

Google My Business requests your name, address, and phone number (otherwise known as “NAP”) to begin the listing. You must ensure that the information provided on Google My Business matches the information on your website exactly, as well as your Facebook page and any other online listings. Inconsistencies in your business’s information across the internet will negatively impact your search ranking.

Filling out your company’s information is especially important because anyone can suggest an edit to your business listing, including competitors.

When someone clicks on “Suggest an edit”, it gives them the opportunity to make some pretty dramatic changes to your listing.

Many times, these “suggestions” are immediately made live on Google, even if you don’t approve them. That’s why it is of utmost importance to proactively monitor and manage your Google My Business listing.

Reviews

When was the last time you tried a new restaurant without reading some reviews first?

Reviews are becoming increasingly paramount for local search. Good reviews lead to more sales, but even bad reviews present an opportunity.

How to get more Google reviews

To share your public Google My Business listing, first pull up your listing on Google Maps. You can do this by clicking the “View on Maps” link on the Home page of your Google My Business account.

Then click the Share button, and send the link to your customers.

Responding to reviews

After you start to gather reviews on your listing, you need to respond to them. All of them.

If you are receiving 5-star reviews, thank your customers for taking the time to leave their feedback.

If you receive less-than-stellar reviews, do not be defensive or hostile. Rather, thank the customer for the feedback, and ask how you could have improved the experience if that wasn’t already made clear.

You can manage your customer reviews by going to the Reviews section in Google My Business.

Questions & Answers

Similar to Reviews, Google My Business allows people to ask questions about the business that anyone can view.

However, anyone can also answer those questions, not just the owner.

Keep a close eye for any questions that come in so you can answer them quickly and keep some control over the narrative.

Messaging

What if your customers have questions that aren’t answered on your website? They can simply call the number listed in the search results, right?

It turns out that most people much prefer messaging over calling when given the option. Some people even have a crippling fear of making phone calls.

That is one of the reasons why Google My Business introduced it’s messaging feature, allowing potential patrons to ask questions and receive direct support via instant messaging.

To enable the messaging feature, it requires downloading the Google My Business mobile app, which can be found inside of your Google My Business account

In addition to messaging your customers one-on-one, the Google My Business mobile app also allows you to also manage your business profile, share photos and posts, and check analytics.

Google My Business Posts

Google posts were first introduced in 2016 as “Candidate Cards” in the 2016 presidential election. Google described these as non-ad privileges, giving 2016 Republican and Democratic candidates a place to speak directly to the public in Google search.

Google stated that during one of the Republican debates “political search interest spikes 440 percent on average during live televised debates as people turn to the web to learn more about the candidates and their platforms.” The then-new Candidate Cards allowed candidates to speak directly to voters and control some of the content that showed when their name was searched on Google.

Proving to be both appealing and informative to viewers, Google then expanded these cards to celebrities and sports teams.

In June 2017, Google brought these posts to local businesses as a way of attracting new customers and building relationships with existing customers. Google My Business posts have proven effective in promoting sales, events, emergency updates such as school closings, or sharing job openings.

Types of posts

Google My Business has 4 different post types.

What’s New posts: Posts that provide general information about your business. You can include a photo/video, link, Call-To-Action button, and other information. For example, a restaurant could make a post to promote a new menu item.

Event posts: Posts that promote an event your business is involved with or supports. Event posts require a title, start/end dates and time, and may include a photo/video, Call-To-Action button, and other information. For example, a bookstore may advertise a local author’s book signing or a book club meeting.

Offer posts: Posts that provide promotional sales or offers from your business. Offer posts require a title and start/end dates and times. A “View offer” Call-To-Action button is automatically added to the post. You can also include a photo/video, coupon code, link, and terms and conditions with the post. For example, a pizza parlor may advertise a 20% off large pizzas for a week.

Product posts: Posts that emphasize a specific product your business sells. Product posts require a title and photo or video. You can also include a Call-To-Action button and other information. For example, an electronics store may promote a new phone for sale.

CTA Buttons

In addition, you can also add an optional Call-To-Action button on each post that links to whatever destination you choose.

Google My Business has a few different Call-To-Actions button options.

Book

Order Online

Buy

Learn More

Sign Up

View Offer (only available for Offer posts)

Google My Business posts can be text only, image only, link only, or any combination of these. Links can be added with or without a Call-To-Action button.

Here is an example of an Event post with a “Learn More” Call-To-Action button.

Insights

Google My Business gives you insights into how many people viewed and clicked on each of your posts.

Additionally, Google My Business shows the queries that people used to find your business on both search and maps, an extremely valuable insight. Queries can be filtered by the last week, month or quarter.

Expiration of posts

Google My Business posts expire after 1 week, meaning 7 days after you post something, it will no longer show in Google’s search results.

The only exception to this is Event posts, which expire after the listed date of the event.

Posting on Google My Business is a no-brainer for any local business that wants to stand out in Google search results. But because Google My Business posts expire after 7 days, it means that at least once a week, you have to remember to log back into Google My Business and post something again.

No need to worry though. Below, you’ll discover 4 different tools that support Google My Business posts scheduling.

This allows you to reap the benefits of being active on Google My Business, without the hassle of going back in week after week to manually post something when your previous update expires.

1. OneUp

OneUp is a social media scheduling tool that supports scheduling posts on Google My Business, in addition to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Connecting your Google My Business account

From the Accounts page, click Connect Location to link your Google My Business account to Social Pilot.

Schedule A Post

Click Add Post to bring up the post scheduler. Social Pilot allows you to add text, a link, and an image while you schedule your Google My Business post.

Repeat your posts

Social Pilot allows you to schedule your posts to be repeated up to 10 times, and you can choose how many days you want in between each repeating post.

Conclusion

Google tends to look favorably upon businesses that are using Google My Business, so you might be shooting yourself in the foot by ignoring it. The tools mentioned above make it easy schedule Google My Business posts and to maintain a consistent presence on GMB, which may help your business stand out from the competition, improve search rankings, drive more traffic, and ultimately acquire more customers.

No, Buffer does not support Google My Business. However, OneUp supports GMB, in addition to Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Google My Business is an easy way for businesses to stand out in local SEO, and posts on GMB have been shown to increase traffic and improve search rankings.

However, the fact that your Google My Business posts expire after 7 days means that you have to constantly go back into GMB and post something week after week, again and again.

The solution: schedule out your Google My Business posts weeks or even months ahead of time.

The issue, however, is that very few social media schedulers work with Google My Business, and the ones that do work charge upwards of $50/month, which is a big hit to take for many businesses. As mentioned, Buffer doesn’t support Google My Business.

However, Google My Business posts are still relatively new, so some people need a little inspiration. Let’s take a look at how different businesses are using GMB posts with Google My Business post examples.

Need a tool to schedule out your Google My Business posts? Check out OneUp at the bottom of this post.﻿

Google My Business post examples for Restaurants

This restaurant is using a Google My Business post to promote their email list, using a Sign Up Call-To-Action button.

This pizza place is promoting a daily special using the Order online CTA button.

This Google My Business post example is a restaurant is showing off how their food is prepared.

This restaurant is promoting a wine event with an Event post and a Learn more CTA button.

This restaurant used a Google My Business post to announce that they will be closed.

This restaurant used a GMB post to promote their event space.

This restaurant is using a GMB post to show off one of their dishes.

This restaurant used a Google My Business post to promote a BOGO half-off special.

Google My Business post examples for Bars

This bar used a Google My Business post to advertise an upcoming beer fest.

This bar used a Google My Business post to promote a New Year’s Eve event.

This bar is using a GMB post with a Learn more CTA button to promote their St. Patty’s day event.

This bar used a Google My Business post to let people know that they were still open despite the bad weather at the time.

Google My Business post examples for Electricians

This electrician used a Google My Business post to let people know that they were open on Presidents days.

This electrician promoted their services and qualifications in a GMB post with a Learn more CTA button.

Google My Business post examples for Auto Shops

This is a Google My Business post example of a shop that simply promote themselves.

This auto shop used a GMB event post to promote free body estimates.

This auto shop used a Google My Business post to offer a $10 off coupon.

Google My Business post examples for Plumbing companies

This plumbing company used a Google My Business post to build trust with potential customers.